A message from the person we like, the ideal job, greater financial prosperity: manifesting promises to bring what we desire closer through visualization, affirmations, and symbolic gestures. On TikTok, even coming across a video devoted to something we want can be interpreted as a sign. The algorithm selects a piece of content; the viewer may recognize in it a message from the universe.

In 2023, the Cambridge Dictionary added a sense of the verb manifest referring to imagining what one desires in the belief that doing so can make it more likely to happen. The following year, it named manifest its Word of the Year. The practices gathered under this label include visualization, the mental construction of the desired scene; the vision board, its translation into a collage; and scripting, a written account of the desired experience as though it has already happened. The ability attributed to these exercises to influence external events through thought remains scientifically unproven.

In July 2026, the American magazine Allure cited data from the analytics company Spate showing that the hashtag #manifesting received 109.9 million weekly views on TikTok.

Beyond the circulation of content, one indication of how widespread these practices have become comes from the Gen Z & Religion Report, published by The Harris Poll in September 2026. In the survey, conducted online in the United States from July 1 to 4 among 2,136 adults, 49% of respondents ages 18 to 29 said they had regularly practiced manifesting over the previous year, compared with 42% of millennials, 25% of Gen Xers, and 9% of baby boomers. The category encompasses visualization, vision boards, and the “lucky girl” mindset, the belief that one is a lucky person. The report also situates these practices within a search for greater control over one’s future.

Manifesting might thus resemble a contemporary variation on “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” In social media feeds, individual will is joined by the experiences of those who say they have succeeded. For those listening, these accounts can take on the weight of confirmation, without demonstrating what role manifesting played in the outcome.

The desire to turn thought into reality, however, predates the vertical screen. Manifesting’s modern roots run through the American New Thought movement of the 19th century. In 2006, Rhonda Byrne revived the law of attraction with the film and book The Secret: according to this belief, thoughts and emotions attract corresponding experiences. Oprah Winfrey helped spread the idea by devoting an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show to the subject in February 2007.

The Secret reached an audience of millions through the book, the film, and television. On TikTok, the invitation to manifest must compete for attention between one video and the next. The hook, the opening designed to draw viewers in, addresses them with concrete prospects: an ex’s return, a message from the person they desire, an influx of money, a job better suited to their abilities. The outcome may be presented as imminent. Before it can persuade, the video must stop the scroll.

Holding that gaze can also have economic value. In markets where it is available, TikTok’s Creator Rewards Program pays participants for eligible, original content longer than one minute, based in part on qualified views. This does not demonstrate that creators are insincere, but it introduces an incentive to keep audiences watching their videos.

The relationship between the platform’s features and users’ beliefs is the focus of a study by Sara Reinis of the University of Pennsylvania, published in 2025 in the International Journal of Communication. After viewing more than 3,000 videos and analyzing a sample of 150, the researcher describes how algorithmic personalization can be interpreted in spiritual terms: content selected on the basis of our interests seems to arrive precisely because we need to see it.

The step from attention to participation can be a short one. Reinis uses the term pressured engagement to describe requests for likes, comments, or shares made urgent by the promise of a benefit or the risk of losing it. Commenting or reusing an audio track becomes a condition of the ritual. The logic of good-luck chain letters meets the platform’s features: the gesture meant to bring the desired outcome closer also helps the video circulate.

Ultimately, what are people seeking in manifesting? An explanation, a confirmation, a reason to keep hoping, an escape from a present that does not reflect who we are?

Celebrities can offer a particularly compelling form of confirmation. For those who admire them, their success can lend their accounts of manifestation something approaching the weight of empirical evidence: the achievement is visible, documented, recognized. If those who have reached it say they first imagined it, the distance between aspiration and outcome seems to shrink.

Such is the case with pop star Dua Lipa and her song “Training Season.” Written in 2022 and released in 2024, it takes on the tone of a secular prayer: someone to hold her close, a deeper intimacy, a partner capable of embracing her vulnerability. Desire takes shape through precise requests, while the chorus declares: «Training season is over». The season of partners who need to be taught how to love has ended. In her April 2024 interview with Elle, the singer connects writing the song with the decision to clarify what she was looking for, explicitly invoking the power of manifestation and words.

Her relationship with actor Callum Turner, whom she married in London on May 31, 2026, seems to give that desire a happy ending. Social media distills a formula from it: the Dua Lipa Manifesting Method. In videos, users list the qualities of their ideal partner or film themselves with their eyes closed, sometimes even with their hands clasped in prayer, as the chorus plays. On September 21, 2026, LOS40 reported more than 1.3 million TikTok posts using the live version recorded at the Royal Albert Hall. The count includes all uses of that audio, but it conveys the reach of the song accompanying the trend. A song born to give voice to a desire thus becomes, for part of its audience, a tool for trying to fulfill it.

From song to ritual, the story offers a path to follow. Such is the persuasive power of anecdotal evidence: a personal account can be enough to make a practice appear effective and encourage emulation. People repeat the gestures described, hoping to achieve a similar result. The formulas vary: desires repeated according to the 369 method, entrusted to a pillow in the pillow method, whispered to an imagined person in the whisper method. If one practice seems too esoteric, another resembles a diary entry. Even doubt can find its own ritual. People write, visualize, and wait. Then the feed starts up again: someone says it worked. For those watching, the temptation may begin right there.